


A Spirit Still Untrammeled

by imaginary_golux



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Explicit Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Smut, Rope Bondage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 03:08:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11245068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: Ares did not quite manage to killallthe gods, and the few survivors have a gift for the demigoddess who has freed them from fear.This is all starbirdrampant's fault, because she said we should go see Wonder Woman; and it was beta'd by my ever-patient Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	A Spirit Still Untrammeled

It has been three days since the battle with Ares - three days since Diana lay pinned upon the ground and watched Steve Trevor, far above her, die to save the lives of uncounted thousands. Three days since Diana learned the truth of her heritage, since she accepted the power which is her birthright and wiped Ares forever from the earth. Three days since she stood watching the sun rise over a world which could at last learn peace.

Diana has not yet had time to mourn. First there was the necessity of finding their way back to London, back to the city Steve first brought her to; and then there were endless, incredulous debriefings, panel after panel of wide-eyed men demanding to know how she could have done this or that or the other thing; and then there was the altogether interesting experience of letting Etta find her a flat, a suite of rooms so much smaller and shabbier than her own in Themyscira, but so much better than the bombed-out ruins of the Belgian countryside that there is no comparison to be found. They are more luxurious, in almost every way, than the best room in the tiny inn where she spent a single, priceless night - in every way, in fact, save the one which matters:

There is no Steve Trevor in them, looking at her with wide eyes filled with awe and reaching out to touch her like she is the most marvelous thing he has ever seen.

Diana is sitting on an uncomfortable wooden chair and watching the sun rise when someone knocks on the door. She’s not expecting anyone - Etta should be coming by later in the day, to take Diana shopping for outfits that won’t scandalize the tender sensibilities of man’s world - but curiosity brings Diana to her feet, makes her tuck her grief away again and open the door.

There is a woman standing there, shorter than Diana, with hair that looks to be as pale as the clouds - or as pink as sunrise - or as blue as the sea around Themyscira’s cliffs. Her clothing is a long tunic, its color as hard to describe as her hair, and her sandals are leather as Diana’s own. And there is something about her that tells Diana, as clearly as a shout, that she is a goddess.

Diana tenses, hand going to her side where her sword ought to hang - her lost sword, her sword which was not the weapon it seemed to be - but the woman drops instantly to one knee, fist to her chest in a gesture oddly like the ones Diana has seen when the warriors of her people give Queen Hippolyta formal greetings and obeisance. “Diana, princess of Themyscira, daughter of Zeus,” the stranger says. “I am Iris, and I come to bring you news, and a gift.”

Diana blinks at her for a moment, then steps back, opening the door wider. “Come in, then,” she says, and Iris rises and obeys. She looks entirely out of place in this slightly shabby dwelling, like a piece of the rainbow broken off and brought to earth.

“I am Iris, the messenger of the gods,” Iris says when Diana has closed the door and turned to study her again.

“I thought the gods were dead,” Diana points out. “So my mother told me, and Ares too, while the lasso compelled him.”

“Your lasso compels the absolute truth as the speaker knows it,” Iris says solemnly, “and so far as Ares knew, I _was_ dead.” She sighs, and some endless sorrow crosses her face. “I am a minor goddess, princess,” she says wearily. “It is my gift to go to and from any place, bearing messages and sometimes more; but I am no warrior, and you who have stood against Ares know how hard he was to slay. Had I stood against him, he would have killed me without effort, and so - to my shame - I hid. I - and others.”

Diana’s eyebrows go up. “Others lived too?”

“Not many,” Iris says, that deep sorrow marking her face again. “Not many, and only those so insignificant that Ares never thought to hunt us down. Myself. Hebe, the cupbearer. Lady Hestia, who guards the hearth-fire. Cybele of the mountains, who concealed us; and Aceso, whose gift is the healing of wounds. We five, and no others, so far as I know.” She takes a deep breath. “We hid, and watched, and what blessings we could give, we gave to Themyscira and to the princess who might yet save us all.”

“Concealment,” Diana says wonderingly. “And the swift healing which is the gift of all the Amazons.”

“Even so,” Iris agrees. “Yet even together, we five dared not face Ares. Perhaps this was cowardly of us - perhaps we should have died with our siblings and cousins! But we are not gods of war, princess, nor are we powerful in battle. We hid, in fear and shame, and waited.”

“I do not think that that was dishonorable,” Diana says slowly, thinking it through. “If you could do nothing, yet hoped for a day when at last you _could_ do something, it was proper for you to preserve your lives for that day. And you did what you could for Themyscira.”

Iris looks immensely relieved. “You do us honor unlooked for,” she says softly, voice full of wonder. “So. We watched all that you did, all that your courage and your power made possible, and now - now I have been sent to tell you, daughter of Zeus and princess of Themyscira, wielder of the lightnings, that we are at your service.” She goes to her knees again - both knees, this time, hands crossed over her chest and head bowed. “We are yours, queen of the gods. Command us, and we shall obey; name any thing which we may do for you and at your will, it will be done.”

Diana blinks in astonishment. Whatever she expected Iris to say, that certainly wasn’t it. But she _was_ raised to be a princess, and she gets her astonishment under control quickly, and reaches out to touch Iris’s shoulder. “I accept your fealty,” she says quietly. “Yours and your fellows’.”

“Thank you,” Iris says, voice thick with relief. “In token of which fealty, my queen, I have brought you a gift - one from all of us. For three days hence, Lady Hestia watched in her fire as you did battle with your brother, with Ares the terrible, and when she saw a certain thing, she sent me forth, for I may go to any place and come again as swiftly as a thought. Cybele concealed us, and Aceso worked such healing as was necessary, and Hebe provided, as is her gift, that nectar which the gods may use to grant to favored mortals such immortal life and youth and health as they enjoy.” Iris stands, and makes a gesture as though she is pulling a cloak away from a hidden figure, and there, revealed, blinking in the morning sunlight, as beautiful and unexpected as peace at the end of war -

“ _Steve_ ,” Diana breathes, and reaches out, and Steve Trevor stumbles forwards into her arms, cupping her face in both hands and gazing at her like he cannot believe his eyes.

“Diana,” he says wonderingly. “Diana, my god - my _goddess_ , _Diana_.”

“Steve,” Diana says again, and pulls him forward into a kiss, pouring every bit of her grief and sudden joy into the press of lips. Steve melts against her, holding her like a drowning man holds a lifeline, clinging to her more tightly than any mortal man could do.

“Iris,” Diana says after a long, blissful moment, looking over Steve’s shoulder as he buries his face against her and shudders with suppressed joy and relief. “Thank you.”

“My queen, it was the least we could have done,” Iris says, smiling. “I shall leave you now; but only speak my name, and I shall come to bear your messages and hear your commands. Fare you well, wielder of the lightnings; all our blessings be upon you both.”

“Thank you,” Diana says again, and Iris is gone, vanished as though she had never been, and Diana is alone in the tiny sitting room of her shabby little flat with her beloved shaking in her arms.

“Steve,” she says gently, and tugs him carefully across the room to the surprisingly comfortable if deeply ugly couch that Etta found for her, and they collapse together atop it. “Steve. When - when you left me, you told me you loved me.”

Steve raises his head - his eyes are dry, Diana sees with mild surprise - and smiles. “I did. I _do_. You’re - you’re the most amazing person, Diana. They let me see your fight with Ares, while Aceso was putting me back together - Lady Hestia showed me in the fire. I have never seen such a _magnificent_ \- such an _astonishing_ \- I have no _words_ , Diana, you’re _amazing_ -”

Diana chuckles in delight, and puts a gentle finger over his lips. “Steve,” she says quietly as he falls silent. “What I wanted to say was, I love you too.”

The look of astonished joy on Steve’s face is quite possibly the most beautiful thing Diana has ever seen. “I don’t deserve you,” he says softly after a long moment, still smiling like sunrise after a storm, “but by - by the _gods_ , I am going to spend the rest of my apparently very long life trying to be worthy of your love.”

*

Explaining how Steve survived is...interesting, but if Diana’s willing to vouch for him, well, the British brass have basically stopped trying to say anything’s impossible where she’s concerned. There’s the very well-substantiated rumors about her deflecting machine gun fire and lifting _tanks_ , after all, and while this slight woman in neatly tailored skirts doesn’t _look_ that dangerous, there’s something about her that makes the hair at the back of the neck stand on end, that suggests that this demure bespectacled proper lady is only a disguise, and not a very durable one at that - that underneath, there is something more wonderful and dangerous than anyone can imagine. So when she says, quite firmly, that Steve fell from the plane as it exploded and was found by some friends of hers and patched up and brought back to Britain, and that’s the end of the story, well...that’s the end of the story.

But that does take up the whole morning, and then of course they have to go find Sammy and Charlie and Chief and Etta and tell _them_ the good news, and they cry or swear or pray - or, in Charlie’s case, all three at once - and Steve ends up buying all of them dinner so that they can tell the story of watching Diana lift a tank and slay a god. Diana listens with interest - she hadn’t realized how astonishing her feats of strength were to mortal men. The sheer awe as they speak of her is - almost dismaying, really. If Diana is going to live among mortals, she doesn’t want them to - to put her on a pedestal and worship her. Maybe she _is_ technically a goddess, but that’s not why she’s here.

Though admittedly she doesn’t mind when _Steve_ looks at her with his expression full of awe and wonder and devotion. But that’s...different somehow.

And then when the food is gone and the stories have been told and the last of the alcohol has been drunk, and Sameer has taken a swaying Charlie off in one direction and Chief has very politely offered to walk Etta home in the other, Steve and Diana go back, not to Diana’s shabby little flat, but to Steve’s rather nicer one, with a handful of books and mementoes on the wall and Steve’s clothes hanging in the closet and a handful of newspaper clippings and notes scattered across the table haphazardly. Diana looks around in wonder. It’s very... _Steve_. It suits him. And it’s oddly comfortable - far more comfortable than her own shabby flat, anonymous and plain - to be standing here surrounded by Steve’s things, by the indescribable feeling of _Steve-ness_.

Steve looks around the flat a little sheepishly. “Sorry it’s...sort of a mess,” he apologizes. “I kind of headed out in a hurry - I can clean up a bit -”

Diana catches his hand, and he stops moving, stands there staring down the scant inches between them, his eyes so very blue. “I like it,” she says quietly, and Steve nods a little, like he’s committing that to memory.

“I always thought,” he says softly, “if I ever found a woman who made me feel like this, I’d ask her to marry me. But - well - remind me tomorrow and I’ll tell you about why I’m pretty sure that’d be a _terrible_ idea here in - in man’s world.” Diana raises an eyebrow at him, and Steve quirks a tiny, rueful smile. “You’ll probably be furious. You should talk to Etta, she can tell you about the suffragettes, it’ll be great -” he breaks off, shakes his head. “Sorry. Not what I wanted to say.”

Diana waits, patiently. She would wait forever, if she needed to.

Steve takes a deep breath, and then he reaches out and takes hold of the lasso at her hip, winds it tight around his wrist just as he did six days - a lifetime - ago. It glows golden as the setting sun. “I’m yours,” he says, quiet and sincere and _joyful_. “Until death do us part, and apparently that’s gonna be a while. I want to - I want to fall asleep next to you and wake up beside you and make breakfast for you and read the paper together and have stupid arguments and make up and kiss you every morning forever. You could - you could do better’n me, Diana, but I’m yours, and I always will be.”

“Steve,” Diana says, marveling, and kisses him. She’s not, by nature, a possessive woman - has never seen the point in demanding that anything be hers and hers alone, when all of Themyscira was hers to share - but something blooms warm within her chest, a feeling she doesn’t recognize, and Steve’s words settle into it with an odd satisfaction. _Hers_. Hers to fight beside, to protect, to sleep beside, to _love_. To keep forever. This beautiful man, who looks at her with such adoration in his eyes, who touches her like she’s more precious than life itself, brave and flawed and brash and _good_ \- hers. Hers forever. “I do not think I could do better.” She smiles into blue, blue eyes and adds, “Didn’t you tell me you were above average?”

Steve laughs, bright and surprised, and kisses her sweet and slow, and Diana revels in it. One night, four days ago, was just enough to teach her that if men are not _necessary_ for pleasure they can certainly be _sufficient_ \- that Steve’s fingers, so clever on a plane’s controls, are just as clever on a woman’s body, and his tongue, so cunning in his lies and sweet in his truths, is just as cunning and sweet between her legs - but one night is not enough. So when the kiss ends, draws to an easy close, Diana draws back just enough to speak and murmurs, “I would - I would share pleasure with you, again.”

Steve’s eyes go wide and very dark, the blue almost eclipsed by his pupils, and he licks his lips and glances down at the lasso still wound around his wrist, and says, “Yes. Please. I -” he pauses, and takes a deep breath, and says, “Anything. Anything you want. Have your way with me.” He smiles, crooked and sweet and full of rueful humor, and adds, “Though please remember that while I may now be immortal I’m pretty sure I’m still _breakable_ , and you can lift tanks.”

“I will remember,” Diana promises solemnly. And she will. It is too much of a miracle that she has Steve _back_ ; she’s not going to damage him now. And then, glancing down at the lasso wrapped around his wrist, the bright-glowing assurance that he has meant every word, her spy who lies so well when he must, she asks, “Do you want to remain bound?”

Steve sways a little, and when Diana looks up, one hand bracing him under his elbow, his eyes are so dark with desire that it almost staggers her. “Oh gods yes,” he breathes, sounding astonished at his own words. “I - I want that, yes, _god_ , I -” He backs up a step, unwinds the lasso from his wrist just long enough to strip off his clothes with swift, unwontedly clumsy hands, and drops to his knees before her, holding out his hands to be bound. Diana’s breath comes short. She tugs the lasso loose from her belt and winds it carefully around his wrists, tight enough to bind but not to injure. Its glow illuminates him, divine light turning pale skin to gold. He looks - worshipful.

“Steve,” Diana says, and tugs him to his feet, backs across the room to the half-open door that leads to his bedchamber, and he follows her, half-stumbling in eagerness or nervousness or something else she cannot name, the lasso hanging in an easy parabola between them. She does not need to pull it taut. She knows that he will follow.

She pushes him back onto the unmade bed, one hand gentle and firm on his chest, and Steve goes down as smoothly as he dances, ends up sprawled out on his back with his bound arms stretched out above his head, throat and belly bared to the cool night air, staring up at her with lust-black eyes, utterly vulnerable, utterly _hers_. He licks his lips, and Diana finds herself staring at the tiny movement, captivated. He meets her gaze and smiles, and very deliberately licks his lips again, slow and tempting. “Diana,” he says hoarsely, like it’s the only truth he knows. “Diana, let me please you.”

“Yes,” Diana says, and steps back from the bed just long enough to shuck her stifling, _proper_ English clothes, until she’s standing bare and naked in the faint moonlight streaming through the window and the golden glow of the lasso wound around Steve’s wrists. Steve makes an indescribable sound, hungry and _wanting_.

“Diana,” he says desperately, and Diana steps up onto the bed, her hair nearly brushing the ceiling, and stands above him, looking down in wonder at the absolute devotion in his gaze. “Diana,” Steve says again, and Diana drops, her knees landing neatly on the pillows on either side of his bound arms, and Steve makes a hoarse noise and cranes his head up to get his mouth between her legs, that clever tongue licking her open eagerly. Diana braces one hand on the bedframe and laces the other - gently, _gently_ \- through Steve’s hair, and spreads her knees a little wider so he doesn’t have to crane so far. His head is heavy in her hand, a pleasant warm weight, and she concentrates hard on _not_ holding too tightly, not pushing at all, her fingers creaking on the headboard as Steve uses that clever, lovely mouth of his to wring exquisite pleasure from her.

Diana feels her orgasm starting in the tips of her fingers and the base of her spine, a tingling that turns into a wave of pleasure that sweeps inexorably over her. She hears the headboard crack as her head goes back and she cries her joy to the echoing walls, but her hand cradling Steve’s head is gentle, gentle, and she does not pull a single hair from his golden head.

When the pleasure ebbs, Diana takes a deep breath and loops the lasso’s end loosely around the bedstead. It won’t hold Steve, should he want to get free, and that’s the point - he’s not bound at her will, but at his own. Then she shuffles back until she can bend and kiss the taste of herself from his lips, run wondering fingers over the stubble rough on his cheeks, place biting kisses down the vulnerable line of his throat as he breathes in great hoarse panting gulps beneath her.

She takes her time exploring his strange flat chest with its tiny pale peaks of nipples that make him gasp when she licks at them or tweaks them with her fingers, but at last she slides further down the bed and finds herself looking down in curiosity at this most different part of him: his manhood hard and straining against his stomach, flushed red and gently curved and oddly beautiful. She runs a gentle finger over it, and Steve makes a low, harsh noise and trembles beneath her.

Diana hums in thought, and bends, and licks the shining head of his manhood curiously. Steve arches up with a thin, keening whine rising from his throat. “Diana,” he says when he has caught his breath a little, “you don’t have to - I wouldn’t ask -”

Diana looks up to see him staring down at her with something wild in his lust-dark eyes. “But does it feel good, as your mouth did on me?” she asks.

“So good,” Steve says hoarsely.

“Then as it pleases me and you as well, you do not have to ask,” Diana says, and bends her head to lick again. Steve’s head thumps back against the pillow, and he shudders, hands clenching into fists and body shaking with the clear effort not to move. Diana splays her hands over his hips and - gently, gently, never bruising - pins him to the bed. Steve makes a sound she cannot quite describe, and sags back against the bed, lax and vulnerable again, giving himself entirely into her power. It’s - exhilarating and terrifying, to know that she holds his pleasure, his body, his very _life_ in her hands.

She sets about learning this most different part of her lover energetically, and finds the salty taste of him appealing, the way he shivers beneath her hands oddly endearing. She tries to memorize the soft, hungry noises he makes, the way he goes from tiny whines to louder moans to half-formed, desperate words: “Yes,” and “please,” and “more,” and ever and again, “ _Diana_.”

“I like the way you say my name,” Diana tells him, and Steve moans, “ _Diana_ ,” like it’s the only word he knows, the only truth in the whole universe worth speaking.

“I want,” Diana says, and considers and discards a hundred words in half a hundred languages, none of which are right. “I want to have you.”

“I’m yours,” Steve says, unhesitating. Diana smiles.

“Yes,” she says, and moves to straddle him, her knees astride his hips, and reaches down to wrap her hand around his manhood, strokes slowly just to see the way his head falls back and his breath comes short. Those twelve volumes that made Steve blush so hard to think of didn’t speak _much_ of this - one volume in the twelve, if that - but Diana thinks that she can extrapolate pretty well. She’s so wet that it’s honestly hard to control the speed with which she slides onto him, and the low, throaty sound Steve makes as her hips come to rest against his is so sweet that Diana suddenly wants nothing more than to make him sound just so again, as many times as possible.

Riding a man is nothing like riding a horse, really, Diana discovers, except that once she finds the right rhythm everything seems to just _flow_ , easy and perfect, one moment blending into the next as Steve’s increasingly desperate moans fill the room. He is unbearably gorgeous beneath her, golden hair gleaming in the light of the lasso, skin gilded by the moonlight as he throws back his head and arches up against her. Diana runs one hand down the center of his chest, spreads it out flat and pins him down and rides him harder, faster, until her second orgasm rises up and swamps her, and Diana has just barely enough presence of mind left to bend down and kiss Steve’s open mouth, biting at his lips, and swallow his cry of pleasure as he comes.

“Diana,” he says, some minutes later, wondering and astonished, and Diana raises her head from where she’s been resting it on his shoulder and smiles, brushes a gentle kiss against his lips and reaches up to unwind the lasso from his wrists. Steve shakes his arms out a little - the lasso left no marks on his fair skin, Diana is pleased to see - and then curls them around Diana, a comfortable warm weight. “My goddess,” he adds, quietly, like it’s a secret, too precious to reveal to anyone but her.

“My Steve,” Diana says, shifting to get more comfortable atop him, like one of the pampered cats Artemis keeps. “My dear one. I love you, and I shall keep you.”

Steve’s laugh shakes her where she rests on his chest, but it’s so full of joy she doesn’t mind at all. “Good,” he says, and one of his hands comes up to stroke slow and gentle over her hair, until Diana’s nearly purring with the soothing pleasure of it. “It’d be a bit of a waste for Iris and the others to go to all that trouble only for you to decide you didn’t want me after all.”

Diana surprises herself by laughing. “I shall always want you, Steve Trevor,” she assures him, propping herself up on one elbow so she can brush a soft, easy kiss over his lips. Steve smiles up at her.

“Always is a long time,” he says. “But if anyone can do the impossible, Diana, it’s you - and I’ll be following you every step of the way.”

“ _Decidedly_ above average,” Diana says contentedly, and they fall asleep laughing with the moonlight lying over them like a blanket and their lives stretched out ahead of them in an endless golden road.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a Sara Teasdale poem.
> 
> I am imaginarygolux on tumblr; drop on by!


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